242 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



serve them running together and forming all imaginable 

 combinations. This, as a purely mechanical process, is 

 seeable by the mind. But can you see, or dream, or in 

 any way imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and 

 from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, 

 and emotion are to rise? Are you likely to extract 

 Homer out of the rattling of dice, or the Differential Cal- 

 culus out of the clash of billiard-balls? ... I can fol- 

 low a particle of musk until it reaches the olfactory nerve; 

 I can follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach 

 the water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti's 

 fibres in motion; I can also visualize the waves of ether 

 as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I 

 am able to pursue to the central organ the motion thus im- 

 parted at the periphery, and to see in idea the very mole- 

 cules of the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is not 

 baffled by these physical processes. What baffles and be- 

 wilders me is the notion that from these physical tremors 

 things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, 

 thought, and emotion can be derived." It is only a 

 complete misapprehension of our true relationship that 

 could induce Mr. Martineau to represent Du Bois-Key- 

 mond and myself as opposed to each other. 



"The affluence of illustration," writes an able and sym- 

 pathetic reviewer of this essay, in the New York "Trib- 

 une," "in which Mr. Martineau delights often impairs the 

 distinctness of his statements "by diverting the attention of 

 the reader from the essential points of his discussion to 

 the beauty of his imagery, and thus diminishes their power 

 of conviction." To the beauties here referred to I bear 

 willing testimony; but the reviewer is strictly just in his 

 estimate of their effect upon my critic's logic. The "afflu- 



